


Tick Tick Boom

by Faraway_Kingdom



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Minor Injuries, Serious Injuries, my first work here, not graphic, something of a character study, sort of a 5 things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 17:22:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18526117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faraway_Kingdom/pseuds/Faraway_Kingdom
Summary: Five times I got hurt(The story of my life, in injures)





	Tick Tick Boom

1\. When I was in Pre-K, I punched a boy in the mouth for making fun of my friend. His baby teeth cut into the soft, unused flesh of my knuckles and sliced one open. The lady in charge of us (I hesitate to say teacher because she didn’t teach, merely supervised) called my mother. I laid out my justifications and she didn’t tell my dad. She still made me apologize. 

2\. The summer I turned ten, my sister hit me in the face with the door of my dad’s pickup truck. The edge of the door broke my nose and orbital bone, and the reverberating force cracked my cheekbone. I had a major concussion. I also had partial retrograde amnesia-- forgetting my brother’s name, my address, my dad’s personality. When the neurologist asked me how many fingers he was holding up, I had no concept of the number, so I sat there and cried. My skull healed, and I eventually recovered most of my memories, but to this day the bones are misaligned and I have fuzzy holes in my life before I was ten. 

3\. After my run on tour in La Boutique Fantasque, I was discovered to have shin fractures. It was the first summer I spent that wasn’t dominated by ballet. I wanted to dance, but even standing hurt on my splintered tibias. I had my first kiss that summer, and I was thinking less about kissing her and more about how bad my shins hurt. And how much I didn’t want to get caught.

4\. In late November, when I was in seventh grade, I took my anxiety medication on its own for the first time. Three minutes later, I was spitting stomach acid and the last dregs of dinner into the toilet. Eventually, someone noticed something was wrong and tossed me into the car, still in my pajama pants and holey tee shirt. I remember everything spinning, too hot and too cold all at once, and my chest felt as if someone had dropped a burning match down my throat. I thought I was going to die in the CHOP ER waiting room. I didn’t.

5\. When I went to Princeton Ballet’s summer intensive, I sprained my ankle on the first day of the third week. It was in a contemporary class, and I rolled out my ankle. I spent the rest of the day agonizing-- what if I had a fracture?-- and I had to work out how to get an X-ray on my own. But I did. It was a sprain, and I spent a week or so in a brace and went back to dancing. I always seem to.


End file.
